Almost as automatically as his name used to appear in the Padres starting lineup, Brian Giles would hear the lone voice as he trotted out to right field for the first time every home game at Petco Park.

“They're gonna fall, Gilly! Hits are gonna fall tonight!”

Of course, there'd be the other voices, the occasional catcall having to do with how much money Giles was making in relation to his strugglesome batting average and diminished power numbers. The snipes about how well Jason Bay's been doing and other business not having to do with baseball. That stuff, Giles had to tune out, but the one voice appealed to his own optimistic outlook and provided bouyance.

“Tonight, Gilly. Tonight!”

Almost surely, Giles is down to his last two tonights and final day in the uniform of the major league team he grew up with, possibly even the last weekend of a professional baseball career that began with his graduation from Granite Hills High more than two decades ago.

On a team undergoing a near-total movement to youth and bare-bones payroll, the 38-year-old Giles has a re-recuperating knee, three months on the disabled list and a .191 average to show for this final season of a contract paying him $9 million for 2009. More than out-of-town scores and ads, then, are written on the right-field wall.

“Certainly,” he said, “this isn't the way you want to go out.”

There's another voice, the one in his own head, that makes Giles want to do something to somehow change the ending this weekend and give him added hope for next season. He said he's talked with manager Bud Black and the training staff about the chances of an at-bat or two this final weekend.

“Hopefully, maybe, we'll see,” Giles said. “It's not important for me to go out and have one last at-bat, just in case it is the last time I play in San Diego. I'd just like to get a couple at bats. It probably won't happen, but we'll see.”

As he spoke, Giles hadn't been in the batting cage in 10 days. He hadn't had so much as an actual plate appearance since June 18, whereupon a knee contusion sent Giles to the disabled list. Only in the past couple of weeks, Giles said, has he been losing that “dead, achy feeling” in his right knee after putting it to various tests.

“Your body will tell you when you can't go out there and play anymore, when it's time to shut it down,” he said. “I don't think I've reached that point in my career yet.”

Giles said this the same way he says most things – save the riddles he gets off Popsicle wrappers and gleefully delivers at the corny punchlines – with a straight face and little sense of emotion.

Indeed, while very much the clubhouse prankster, Giles maintains such an even-keel approach to the game, you often can't tell from his expression whether he's just walked or struck out, driven in two runs or been hit by a pitch.